


Hidden Deep Inside

by Omorka



Category: Ghostbusters (1984)
Genre: Gen, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter opens a booby trap and gets possessed by the last of Gozer's lieutenants; it's up to the rest of the team to stop him - but they're under a court order not to use their equipment!  (Takes place between the two movies)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden Deep Inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calliopes_pen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliopes_pen/gifts).



> Sorry, but I read your prompt and had to take a crack at it. Hope you don't mind an extra! Has a tiny bit of Peter/Dana shippiness in it, but not enough to warrant labeling it as het.

Louis sat straight up in bed, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Wild-eyed, he looked around the room, the shadows from his blinds splitting the wall into cage bars. He kicked back the sheets, rolled off the mattress, and landed on the floor on all fours, sniffing the air suspiciously.

He couldn't see. Where were his glasses? Why had he landed on his hands and knees?

Oh, God, he'd been dreaming about it again. Why now? It had been all he dreamed about for months after it had happened (he was convinced Dana was lying about nothing having happened between them up there; the dreams sure said otherwise), but after a couple of sessions with a therapist Dr. Venkman had recommended, they'd stopped except for one or two every October. It was August, way too early for those to be starting.

"Maybe I ate something wrong," he mumbled. His hand closed on his glasses and he slid them on; the clock on the nightstand said it was 4:45 a.m. He was going to have to get up in a little over an hour, anyway.

"Might as well take a long shower, anyway," he decided as he pulled himself to his feet.

\---

The lab's main phone didn't ring that often. One of the grad students answered it; Egon was discussing the design of the telekinetic amplification chamber with Dr. William Hayes on the secondary line. One of the many difficulties with his particular field of research was that almost all his colleagues who shared his interests were based out in California, and getting them to visit the East Coast was exceptionally difficult.

Thuy Nguyen appeared in the doorway. "Dr. Spengler, it's for you."

"I'm in the middle of an important consultation here." Egon scowled; most of his assistants knew better than to interrupt him.

Miss Nguyen looked pained. "I'm very sorry, sir, but he says it's urgent."

"Whoever it is, they can wait," he snapped.

"It's Dr. Stantz, sir. He says it's about Dr. Venkman."

Egon ran one long hand down his face. "What has Peter done this time?"

"He says he's gone missing."

Dr. Spengler blinked. "Missing? As in kidnapped?"

"He didn't say." Miss Nguyen looked at the floor.

Egon sighed and turned back to the phone. "I'm very sorry, Dr. Hayes, I'm going to have to call you back. It appears we have a minor emergency here." He arranged to reschedule the call and then pressed the other line. "Spengler here. What's the problem, Ray?"

"Venkman disappeared from his set this morning!" Ray was excited, as he always was when something interesting happened.

"And he didn't just walk off because he was bored?" Egon still wasn't sure why Ray was calling him rather than the police.

"No, I mean, he literally disappeared! They have it on tape and everything! I mean, they can't use it, there's a boom mike in the shot, but he opened a box one of his viewers had sent him during a camera test, and then - *bamf*, gone!"

Egon paused, then slid open one of the metal drawers on his desk. "Can we get in there?"

"Um, I hope so." Ray sounded like he hadn't even thought about that.

"I'll meet you there. Call Zeddemore if you can."

"He's working this morning. His brother called him in for an engineering consultation." Of course Ray had already called him.

"I should be there in approximately forty-two minutes." Egon hung up and scooped the PKE meter out of the drawer, checking its batteries on the way out.

\---

_What do you want? I'm busy!_ Peter shouted into the darkness.

He could feel that he was running, could feel his feet hitting pavement, had felt it when he collided with someone earlier. There was something in his hand, something small and metallic. Probably whatever had been in the box.

_I know my viewers are nuts. Why did I open the box, again?_

All his senses other than touch were - not gone, exactly. Taken away from him. All he saw was velvet blackness. He could hear nothing, not even the rush of blood in his ears. No smells, either. Technically, he supposed he didn't know about taste yet, but that probably wasn't going to tell him anything, anyway.

He felt like he was in a cell, or maybe a closet, a cramped, dark, empty space, except that he knew he was running.

_Where are we going? Are you lost? Let me see, maybe I can tell you where you are._

Suddenly, he was the focus of its attention; he wanted to fling himself away, curl up in a ball, get away from it somehow. If he hadn't already been running, he would be now.

_SHUT UP, FLESHBAG,_ it roared, and turned away again.

\---

When Egon finally got to the TV studio, the police had arrived, although given that they were interviewing the cameraman, they must have only barely beaten him there. Ray was hovering at the edge of the little soundstage as an officer looked at the cardboard box on the table.

Trying not to be conspicuous, Egon raised the PKE meter. Strictly speaking, they were under a court injunction not to use any of the tools of their former trade, and while this version of the meter post-dated the close of business and thus shouldn't be covered under the injunction, he didn't expect any of the police to recognize the distinction.

The box definitely registered. No, that was an object in the box. He edged around, trying to look over the cop's shoulder.

"Oh, hey, you guys." The policewoman who had been talking to the cameraman turned towards him. "You're a friend of the missing person, right?"

"Former colleague," Egon said carefully, keeping one eye on the meter. The readings appeared to be stable, but you could never tell for sure.

She pointed at the video monitor. "Well, this seems like it's more up you guys' alley than ours, and formally, we can't file a missing person report before 48 hours unless there's a suspicion of kidnapping or foul play. You make anything of this?"

The technician finished rewinding the tape and pressed PLAY. The camera was focused on the center of the set, where Peter's chair normally was; Peter was half-out of the frame, complaining about the coffee and the guest scheduled for the day.

"Look, can we at least get me a better quality of crazy? I don't care if they're total wackjobs as long as it's good TV, but this guy sounds like he's not just nuts, he's boring as - what's this?" Peter was saying to someone just off camera. The response was inaudible, but Peter stepped out of the frame and then back in holding the cardboard box. "Hey, fan mail is fan mail, I guess," Peter said, setting the box on the round white table and digging a Swiss army knife out of his pocket. "I wish they wouldn't put those stickers over the return address, though; some of my former guests might not be above dead rats." He slit the tape and unfolded the flaps on the box. A flash of red light washed out the image for a split-second; when it faded, the soundstage was empty.

The technician stopped the tape and looked at the cameraman, who shrugged. "I really can't tell you much more. The box came in with this morning's mail; it was addressed to Dr. Venkman care of the station. The only people here were me and the stage manager - she's in Studio Six right now, setting up for Uncle Happy's Fun Time." He glanced at Egon. "And I'm pretty sure that he didn't just run past me when the flash went off. No one saw him at any of the studio doors. He just - vanished." The gangly young man crossed his arms in front of himself and hugged his elbows.

Egon glanced at Ray, then at the cop. "May I see the contents of the box?" The policewoman nodded, and Ray edged carefully forward, camera at the ready.

The flaps had fallen back into place. Egon plucked a pencil from his pocket and flipped them back open. Inside were several fragments of what looked like a ceramic statue. Egon nudged one of them with the eraser end as Ray's shutter snapped. It rolled over and became recognizable as a head, vaguely ursine or canine, with long curving horns.

Ray inhaled sharply. "A terror dog sculpture."

"I concur." Egon frowned, and consulted the meter. The fragments were definitely the PKE source it was detecting. "But why would someone send that to Venkman?"

The second cop finished tugging on a pair of vinyl gloves and turned one flap of the box back over. "More importantly, I'd say, is who sent it," he commented, as he carefully peeled back the sticker that obscured the return address.

There was no address written there, just three lines of illegible scribbles pretending to be letters. The cops frowned.

"I suppose that's evidence?" Ray asked the policewoman.

She nodded. "We'll have to take it, in case this becomes a real missing persons case. But there's not a whole lot we can do - there's nothing on the tape that supports a kidnapping over Dr. Venkman leaving under his own power." She scratched under the edge of her cap. "Honestly, this seems more like your bailiwick than ours."

"But we're - " started Ray; Egon elbowed him sharply in the ribs and interrupted, "I agree. If we find him before the time limit, we'll contact you."

"Good luck." The cops collected the box and the original of the videotape, and headed for the door. The technician shrugged and handed a duplicate copy to Ray.

"Now what?" Ray whispered as Egon took one more PKE sweep and then headed for the exit himself.

Egon shrugged. "The terror dogs seems to be connected to the specific Gozer cult we dealt with before. How many other buildings did Ivo Shandor design?"

"Five or six." Ray bit his lower lip in thought. "I guess we could get their blueprints, too."

"Let's start by getting their street addresses. I suspect that Peter's been taken to one of them." Egon frowned. "The problem will be determining which one, before whoever - or whatever - kidnapped him realizes we're searching for him."

\---

Dana Barrett was not having a good morning. Every time she thought she was past the point where throwing up was a daily occurrence, it started again. On top of that, Andre was home and in one of his snits. Some days she wondered how he'd gotten to be a first-chair violinist when the smallest things could throw him into a door-slamming funk.

There was a knock at the door, a loud one. She stood up suddenly, and immediately regretted it. "Andre, can you get that?" she called into the next room.

"I'm busy. Get it yourself, or just ignore it," he yelled back.

Busy, shmizzy; he was listening to one of his old performances on headphones and preening. She steadied herself against the armchair and got to the door just as the knocking resumed, louder than before. Undoing the chain, she pulled it open.

Peter Venkman stood on the other side, his hair askew and his shirt untucked. He stared at her with a combination of desperation and _hunger_ that made her stumble.

"Peter!" she gasped. "What are you doing here? How did you know this was my place; I never gave you this address!"

He looked at her as if he didn't understand what she was saying. His eyes were steel-blue glass, his pupils pinpoints.

"Who is it?" shouted Andre from the next room.

"Just an old friend," she called back, as she shoved Peter away from the door and stepped into the hallway. "What are you _thinking_, Peter? I'm _married_ now, I'm - "

She stopped. In the dimmer light of the hallway, his eyes seemed to glimmer with a dull red light of their own. But that wasn't possible; that would mean -

He finally opened his mouth, and the voice was his, but the tone was a stranger's. "Zuul."

"What?" She stared at him, her hand finding the doorknob again.

"Zuul, the Gatekeeper. You are - " Peter stumbled towards her. "You were."

She backed against the wall, hand still on the knob. "Who are you?"

"I am Kalz Devarr, the Lockguard. The lock must be opened . . . where is Zuul?" A muscle twitched in Peter's jaw.

"Zuul's dead." She took a deep breath and forced herself to stay calm. "Kalz, I need to speak to Peter."

"Peter is . . . gone. I have eaten him." The thing in Peter's body smiled for the first time, a horrible, lopsided wolf-grin.

"That's more or less what Zuul told him, when she was in me. She was lying." Dana swallowed. "I think you're lying, too. I need to talk to _Peter_."

Something flickered in Peter's face, then faded again. The red glow in his eyes sharpened and intensified. "You are useless. There is nothing of Zuul left in you," he hissed, as he pivoted on one heel and took off running down the hallway, shirt-tail flapping behind him.

Dana forced down a sudden wave of nausea and escaped back into her apartment, latching the chain again. She dropped into the chair next to the phone and dug in her purse for her address book, hunting for a number and dialing with shaking fingers.

\---

Ray frowned at the sheaf of blueprints in front of him. "Shandor designed, either by himself or with his apprentices, a total of twelve buildings, all in the same general area of town. Some of them no longer exist." He flipped one upside-down. "It looks like only two of them were residential."

"And one of those has already been accounted for." Egon tugged a small metal tin from his pocket, removed a lemon drop, and offered Ray one.

"No, thanks," Ray waved him off. "I don't see anything particularly extraordinary on the other ones. Winston's been taking night classes towards a master's in architecture, did I tell you that? Anyway, I think I need to call him in on this one."

"Go right ahead." Egon leaned on the wall next to the phone as Ray dialed.

"Hey, Winston, I know you're busy, but - what? No, I didn't get a message from you, Spengler and I have been out all day. It turns out Pete's disappearance was legit - wait, who? When? Where?" Ray yanked a miniature notebook and a click-top ballpoint from his shirt pocket and began scribbling. "That's great! Did she tell you - oh, she is?" Ray looked up. "Um, Egon, can we meet back at your lab? Winston says Peter showed up at Dana's apartment, and Dana thinks he's possessed!"

Egon raised an eyebrow. "Certainly. I'll call Van and let him know we're coming."

Ray turned back to the phone. "Yeah, okay, Winston, we'll be back there as soon as we can. Can you bring Dana with you? Great, see you both there!" He hung up and almost dropped the receiver. "Just think, Egon, a full spirit possession of someone trained to observe and catalog it!"

"Assuming that Venkman isn't being tortured. Ray, if he is possessed, how are we going to extract the hostile spirit? We can't use our old equipment, and none of the types of prayer used against Gozer had any effect whatsoever - if this is one of its servants, an exorcism isn't likely to be effective." Egon dropped a coin into the slot, swallowed the remnants of the lemon drop, and dialed his assistant's office number.

Ray shook his head. "We'll think of something. Maybe we can talk Pete out of it, or maybe we can use the packs on the down low."

"Ray, if we hit Peter with a proton stream, he'd be neutronized." Egon turned back to the phone. Reining in Ray's enthusiasm without Peter was difficult, at best.

\---

"And then he took off running down the hall towards the stairs," Dana finished. The four of them were all stuffed into Egon's office; Ray stood, leaning against the door, and Egon perched on the corner of his desk, while Dana and Winston occupied the two chairs.

Winston looked up from the blueprints. "Ray, are you sure I'm looking for something on the roof? 'Cause none of these have anything like what we saw up there."

Egon shook his head. "While the roof would be the easiest place to situate a full temple, it's possible that we're looking for something smaller - say, a Gozerian shrine. That could be located on any floor."

"Look on the east side of the buildings," Ray offered. "Gozer in its Traveller form is usually drawn arriving from the East."

"But what are you going to do about Peter in the meantime?" Dana asked, trying to catch Ray's eye. Guilting him into action was easier than motivating Egon.

Ray frowned. "If we're not allowed to use the proton packs, I'm not sure how to evict the malevolent spirit from Venkman. A large source of positive energy would work, but where would we find one that big?"

Egon steepled his fingers in front of him. "Your earlier suggestion of talking Peter out of it might work, if the entity in question is easily angered. We could goad it into attacking one of us directly, rather than through Venkman. Or, possibly we could convince it that one of the rest of us would make a more appropriate host."

"What good would that do?" Dana wondered.

A flicker of a grin played at the corners of Ray's mouth. "We're prohibited from using the packs. The legal injunction doesn't say we can't use the _traps_, or the containment unit."

"And in fact, Ray has retained ownership of the firehouse, so we do have a containment unit available," Egon continued. "I have one charged trap here. Ray, do you have any?"

"I have six or seven repaired ones, but I don't think any of them are charged." Ray's face fell.

"How long does it take to charge one?" Dana asked.

"Twelve to twenty-four hours, depending on whether the battery's fully discharged or not," Ray replied, looking at his shoes.

Egon shook his head. "The maneuver will require split-second timing, and will probably only work once; after that, the entity will be aware of our intentions. If the first trap doesn't work, we may not have the opportunity for a second try."

Winston sat up. "Hey, Ray, look at this." He traced an outline on the blueprints with one finger. "You see that?"

Ray leaned over. "It's a 12 by 12 room that doesn't connect to anything else." He scowled. "It doesn't even have a door, does it?"

"Nope." Winston tapped at it. "That the right size for a shrine? It's against the eastern wall of the building."

"Very possibly." Egon nodded. "Where is it?"

"The Grand Credit Bank building." Winston pointed at the address.

Ray and Egon both deflated slightly. "Well, getting in there without the team mouth is going to be a tight squeeze," Ray mumbled.

"We don't know that he's barricaded himself in there," Egon pointed out. "He's left at least once to try to find Zuul."

Dana sat up straight. "And that means he'll also probably try to find - "

The other three shouted along with her. "Louis!"

\---

Louis opened his apartment door - he kept the key on a chain attached to his belt, now - and stepped in. The furniture still looked strange to him, even four years later; nothing from the apartment on Central Park West had been the least bit salvageable. Fortunately, since he'd been hosting a work-related party at the time the incident started, he'd been able to take a tax write-off in addition to the insurance payment, and almost everything was replaced. But he didn't remember there being a brown lump on the big recliner before.

The recliner turned to face him; Louis jumped backwards. A pair of staring red eyes bored into him, and a voice he only heard in his dreams started clamoring in his head.

A voice outside his head, from the recliner, whispered "Vinz."

"Yes?" Louis said, the syllable falling from his mouth like a marble onto glass.

His visitor stood and stepped towards him, one arm outstretched. "You are needed, Vinz."

"Needed for what?" The whispering in Louis's head nearly drowned him; his vision blurred. Why was everything red?

"We must call Gozer back. Your work was . . . interrupted." The figure stepped close enough to recognize in the dark.

Louis tried to blurt out "Dr. Venkman!," but what came out was "Kalz? We thought you had fled, tail between your legs."

"Lucky for both of us, the ritual only requires two." Venkman's face twisted into a snarl. "It is not my fault that Shandor imprisoned me in a separate place, as the option of last resort."

Louis shook his head, or rather, he felt his head being shaken. "The ritual requires the Gatekeeper, and she is gone. She went with Gozer back to the Realm Beyond when the gate was broken." Dana, the thing in his head was talking about Dana.

"And you did not accompany Gozer, as a faithful servant would?" A terrible, rictus-like grin spread across Venkman's lips. "Who had his tail between his legs then, Vinz?"

"It was confusion, not cowardice." Louis struggled against the words coming from somewhere in his chest. "We did not know the fleshlings could fight back with weapons other than magic."

"Oh, we have all sorts of things you guys couldn't have known about," said a voice from the door. The two men, possessed and half-possessed, turned to look as Ray, Egon, and Winston stepped into the room. Dana edged in behind them, using Ray as cover; he had his arms folded over his chest, as if seeing Peter like this chilled him.

Louis flailed. "Hey, help me, I think Vinz is - " The words were strangled in his throat; he raised his hands to his own neck and gagged.

Venkman shifted to face them. His eyes burned like lava, and his face looked strangely drawn and pale. "So, the chastisers of Gozer have come to face me." The burning eyes raked across them. "Unarmed. So bold? Or just foolish?" One finger trailed across his chest. "I know, you fear to hurt this one." He laughed, a horrible metallic noise. "He is already dead; I have devoured his soul to fuel my own. But your fear will still serve me, I think."

Winston gestured. "Louis, come here," he whispered. "Get away from Pete." Louis attempted to obey and was thrown to his hands and knees; the gabbling in his head turned to a roar, and he couldn't see anything but the carpet in front of him.

Egon's face was a porcelain mask. "What is your name?"

The thing in Venkman's body just laughed. Dana said, firmly, "It said its name was Kalz Devarr earlier."

Egon cleared his throat. "Kalz Devarr, I understand why you chose one of the conquerors of Gozer as your host, but I believe that from a purely logical standpoint you chose the wrong one."

The face that was now almost a caricature of Peter's wrinkled in confusion. "And why do you think that?"

"Peter is fundamentally the least knowledgeable of all of us about the things you'll need," Egon said, dropping easily into the tone and posture of a lecturer in front of a class. "There's only one of you, so you can't replicate the ritual that summoned Gozer the first time, even if you had Shandor's temple. You'll have to find a technological means of opening a portal. To do that, you'll need a host who has a strong working knowledge of dimensional gates, both in the occult sense and in terms of their scientific theory and construction. In short," he finished, "you need me, not Peter."

Something shifted in Venkman's face. "You would really offer yourself in exchange for him, o chastiser?"

"Of course." Egon's face betrayed no emotion.

The awful grin returned. "Fortunately for you, I do not need your knowledge. You say there is only one; I say there are two." He stretched out one finger - it seemed longer and thinner than Peter's usually were - and pointed at Louis where he cringed on the floor.

Louis rolled over, and his eyes were dull red. "Maybe I don't want to summon Gozer with you," Vinz snarled through his lips. "Maybe I would rather find a way to call Zuul back here. The Traveller is eternal; I have time enough, even if this fleshbag is an idiot."

Peter's body smiled sweetly at him. "Would you like me to explain this plan of yours to the Destructor for you?"

"You won't need Vinz if you have everything I know about summonings and dimensional portals," Egon reminded Kalz, his voice carefully flat.

"I think I can convince him," Kalz leered.

Dana stepped forward. "But you'd rather not, wouldn't you? You came looking for Zuul first. I don't think that's just because Peter's still attracted to me."

"Dana, no," whispered Ray; Egon held up one hand to shush him.

"But you're not Zuul," growled Kalz. "He still has most of Vinz left in him."

"What do you mean, 'most of'?" barked Louis from the floor.

"No, but I remember what Zuul and Vinz did to summon Gozer the last time," she murmured, trying to move her shoulders like Zuul had. "I think I could do it again."

"You're native to this plane; it wouldn't - " Kalz broke off and stared at her. "You are quick."

"Did you think she was stupid before?" Winston wondered. Egon's eyebrows jumped.

Dana stepped back and put one hand on her abdomen. "What do you mean?"

"That power, the energy of a new life, that would be sufficient by itself!" Peter took two steps forward, jerking like a puppet on tangled strings. "Why did I not see before? You will be mine!" Venkman's body shook like a leaf in a hurricane, and a gray miasma began oozing from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils, his pores.

"Dana, get behind Ray," Egon urged. She ducked behind the stouter Ghostbuster, peering over his shoulder as the cloudy mass took on the gross triangular head of a terror dog.

"They cannot shield you," it growled as it floated free of Peter's body; Venkman collapsed to the carpeted floor like his strings had been cut. Louis whimpered. The vaguely bear-shaped mass flung itself towards Dana.

Ray yanked his jacket open, and the trap strapped to his chest split its doors in a burst of brilliant white light. Kalz howled like a coyote and struggled, but proximity and momentum did the work of a proton stream; it was sucked in. Ray stomped one foot, and the trap snapped shut with a hiss.

"Ow, ow, ow," he muttered as he unstrapped it. "I forgot how hot these things get when they're operating."

Egon strode to Peter's side in three long steps and knelt. "He's breathing. I've got a pulse," he announced.

Winston joined him and tugged a penlight from his pocket. "Let's see if his pupils are reactive." He peeled back one eyelid and shone the light into Venkman's face.

Weakly, one hand pushed the light away. "I 'preciate y'r concern, Zed, but that hurts like Hell," Peter mumbled.

"I _knew_ he was lying," Dana sighed in relief.

"That's what they do," Louis said, pulling himself up to a sitting position. "At least, to us."

Ray dangled the trap by its cord from one hand, and went over to help Louis back to his feet. "So, what are we going to do with you?"

"I don't know." Louis fidgeted. "I think the trap freaked him out. I mean, he's not in control now."

"We'll have to have you come by the firehouse on our off hours at some point," Egon said, looking at the ceiling. "I'll test to see how much of Vinz is really left in your psyche, and how much was just Kalz tapping your repressed memories." He exchanged a glance with Ray above Louis's head.

"Okay," Louis conceded.

"So now what? Are we done?" Winston asked.

Peter shook his head. "There's a room - all white - with a model of the rooftop temple from Dana's old place. No doors or windows. It's one of the few things he let me see. It's where he teleported me when I opened the box." He shuddered, and took a deep breath. "I'll bet wherever that is, is where the box was mailed from, too."

Ray glanced at Winston. "Sounds like the room from the blueprints."

Egon nodded. "We'll take care of it. Peter, can you walk?"

"I don't know." Venkman tried to struggle to his feet, and fell again. A small metal object dropped from his left hand and bounced on the carpet. "That pug-nosed son-of-a-bitch never heard of the subway. Everywhere he dragged me today, we either teleported or ran. My feet feel like hamburger."

Ray and Winston scooped Peter up between them. "Let's take you back to the firehouse for observation overnight," Ray suggested. "You can sack out on your old bunk, and then in the morning we'll look into trying to get into Shandor's old model room."

"And perhaps you could do a hypnotic regression on Louis," Egon noted. He ran the PKE meter over the object that Peter had dropped. It looked like an old-fashioned skeleton key, and it had strong residual readings. Egon plucked it from the rug and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

"Yeah, maybe." Peter shook his head. "We gotta be careful, though. We don't want the city to bust us."

"No packs, I promise," Ray said, still holding the trap.

Peter turned towards Dana. "Um, thanks. I'm sorry he tried to freak you out like that earlier. Uh, was he right about you being . . . ?"

"Pregnant? Yes." Dana smiled slightly. "We just hadn't made the announcement yet."

"Well, congratulations." Peter looked like he'd bitten down on a hot pepper. The other three chimed in more sincerely.

"Thanks," she smiled. "Winston, do you think you could drop me back off at my place?"

"Sure, but let's get these three back home first." Winston shook his head. "The courts give me the car in the break-up, I gotta be everyone's chauffeur."

Peter gave Egon a strange look as they filed out, but said nothing. Ray asked Dana about her plans for renovating a nursery as they left.

Louis sank onto his sofa and stared at the ceiling. "Vinz?" he whispered.

He wasn't sure if he was imagining the growl that replied or not.


End file.
